Toyotaro Is Not the Right Successor. To Me, Dragon Ball Ends with Daima

[foxfang4]

Whether you consider *Daima* a part of *Super* or not, it feels like the last thing Toriyama left us with, and I’m choosing to see it as the definitive end.

And a big reason for that? Toyotaro.

Look, I’ve tried to enjoy his work. I’ve read the *Moro* arc, the *Granolah* arc. I even gave his interpretations of Ultra Ego and Gohan Beast a fair shot. But the more I see of his writing, the more I realize that he fundamentally does not understand what made Toriyama’s storytelling work. Toyotaro is just too serious.

One thing that really hit me was how Super Saiyan 4 was handled in *Daima*. It was almost comically underexplained, which at first seemed like a nice callback to how Toriyama used to let things be implied rather than over-explained. But then I thought about it: Toyotaro is the complete opposite. When he gets the chance to define something, he goes way too far in making everything explicitly psychological.

Toriyama had a minimalist approach to transformations and power-ups. He gave just enough information for fans to connect with them on their own, both emotionally and psychologically. But with Toyotaro? Everything is detailed to death. Ultra Ego? Over-explained. Gohan Beast? Over-explained. The mystery, the nuance, the emotional weight. It’s gone.

Then there’s the storytelling itself. I barely liked anything in the *Moro* or *Granolah* arcs outside of a few scattered ideas. The rest? Absolute fanfiction-tier writing. Toyotaro tries to balance humor with grand-scale storytelling, but his comedy just comes off as cheap gags rather than the sharp, cynical humor that Toriyama had, a humor that often poked fun at human nature itself. Toyotaro’s jokes feel like weak imitations rather than natural extensions of the Dragon Ball spirit.

With Toriyama’s passing, IMO Dragon Ball has lost its heart. Toyotaro is in no way worthy of carrying the franchise forward, and honestly, I don’t want to see what Dragon Ball becomes in his hands with a list of guaranteed infinite transofmatons. For me, the final Kamehameha in *Daima*, and that brief glimpse of Super Saiyan 4, felt like the closing of an era.

[The Monkey King]

Toyotarou's works are either highly derivative (Moro arc), just god awful (Granolah arc) or painfully boring (Super Hero prequel).

Not to mention his paneling is still lacking and looks like anime story boards after almost 10 years of drawing DBS. Even Torishima said his drawings were lacking when he read Beast Gohan vs UI Goku.

Don't get me wrong he has his moments: I do like the way he writes Adult Gohan, I liked Moro vs the Grand Kai and Merus as a character.

But overall he's just a fan fiction author, I agree OP, he's no successor to me either

[mute_proxy]

I would give him a pass if his art was top notch, but everything about his work feels mediocre to me, so I agree, they should hurry up and finish the story as best a way they can.

[Izanagi]

Toriyama didn't really choose Toyotaro to be his successor. Before Resurrection 'F' there were a few official artists who would draw promotional material such as Dragon Ball SD, Dragon Ball Heroes chapters and other video games related stuff. Toyotaro was one of them. So when it was time to draw a promotional manga for the movie, Toyotaro was picked for the job by Shueisha and he would continue his manga to promote the new Super anime.

He was literally just in the right place at the right time. It's not like they spent years or even months looking for the most competent person to fill in the job. They just used whoever was available and Toyotaro was the closest person they could get. Shueisha wanted to promote the manga since they have the full rights to it and no one can take it from them. So they were the ones pushing the hardest for it. Toyotaro unironically got lucky but he honestly improved.

He's not really great but he's not bad either, he's just mediocre.

[Vegeta th3 4th]

What makes Daima such a fitting ending to Dragon Ball is just how involved Toriyama was with the project, going as far as to design nearly everything we saw on screen and even check the actual scripts of each episode. Unlike Super's arcs where he was more of a guide, this time around he was completely hands on with every aspect of the show.

As for Toyotaro, I'd let him conclude Super by wrapping up whatever he and Toriyama were planning with Black Freeza. In an ideal world, that's where Dragon Ball as a story would end as a result of the original author passing away, but we all know they're going to run this into the ground like they did back in the 90s when they rushed GT into production.

Once Super (hopefully) concludes, I'd hire a new team of people who understand Dragon Ball in terms of lore, as well as Toriyama's writing style. I would give said team actual time to plan things out instead of making it up on the fly. Toriyama may have been able to do that back in the day, but the chances of someone pulling it off successfully today are slim to none.

[SupremeKai25]

One thing that really hit me was how Super Saiyan 4 was handled in *Daima*. It was almost comically underexplained, which at first seemed like a nice callback to how Toriyama used to let things be implied rather than over-explained. But then I thought about it: Toyotaro is the complete opposite. When he gets the chance to define something, he goes way too far in making everything explicitly psychological.

Why is it that it's okay for SSJ4 to be "comically under-explained", but not Super Saiyan Rage Trunks?

Is it just because Toriyama wrote it himself?

[sangofe]

Toriyama didn't really choose Toyotaro to be his successor. Before Resurrection 'F' there were a few official artists who would draw promotional material such as Dragon Ball SD, Dragon Ball Heroes chapters and other video games related stuff. Toyotaro was one of them. So when it was time to draw a promotional manga for the movie, Toyotaro was picked for the job by Shueisha and he would continue his manga to promote the new Super anime.

He was literally just in the right place at the right time. It's not like they spent years or even months looking for the most competent person to fill in the job. They just used whoever was available and Toyotaro was the closest person they could get. Shueisha wanted to promote the manga since they have the full rights to it and no one can take it from them. So they were the ones pushing the hardest for it. Toyotaro unironically got lucky but he honestly improved.

He's not really great but he's not bad either, he's just mediocre.

Do you have a source for this story?

[JulieYBM]

I don't think Toriyama's death changes anything. Nothing about Dragon Ball has ever been 'must see/read'. If you don’t like something, go do something else—it's the sane thing to do.

That logic will continue to apply as it always has, whether Toriyama is alive or not.

[Izanagi]

Toriyama didn't really choose Toyotaro to be his successor. Before Resurrection 'F' there were a few official artists who would draw promotional material such as Dragon Ball SD, Dragon Ball Heroes chapters and other video games related stuff. Toyotaro was one of them. So when it was time to draw a promotional manga for the movie, Toyotaro was picked for the job by Shueisha and he would continue his manga to promote the new Super anime.

He was literally just in the right place at the right time. It's not like they spent years or even months looking for the most competent person to fill in the job. They just used whoever was available and Toyotaro was the closest person they could get. Shueisha wanted to promote the manga since they have the full rights to it and no one can take it from them. So they were the ones pushing the hardest for it. Toyotaro unironically got lucky but he honestly improved.

He's not really great but he's not bad either, he's just mediocre.

Do you have a source for this story?

It's from an old interview back in 2017 when Toyotaro visited Italy's Comic-Con. Here you go.

Question: How were you chosen as Akira Toriyama's successor?

Toyotaro: I went to Shueisha and told them I wanted to draw Dragon Ball Super. They gave me the opportunity to work on the series related to the video game, and after about three months, they asked me to draw two pages of Dragon Ball Super. That’s how it all started, and I was really happy.

https://www.animeclick.it/news/64770-na ... n-toyotaro

[VegettoEX]

It's from an old interview back in 2017 when Toyotaro visited Italy's Comic-Con. Here you go.

Question: How were you chosen as Akira Toriyama's successor?

Toyotaro: I went to Shueisha and told them I wanted to draw Dragon Ball Super. They gave me the opportunity to work on the series related to the video game, and after about three months, they asked me to draw two pages of Dragon Ball Super. That’s how it all started, and I was really happy.

https://www.animeclick.it/news/64770-na ... n-toyotaro

This, of course, isn't actually true in exactly how he described it... or at least how that's translated and therefore comes across.

He had already worked on the video game series in question (Dragon Ball Heroes: Victory Mission) from 2012 to 2014, before Dragon Ball Super even existed (and arguably was even conceived of).

After that, he did the three-chapter introductory manga for Resurrection 'F' in early 2015.

So maybe he approached Shueisha about doing a manga for Super, and maybe that "three months" period, if you squint real hard, is referring to the period from April 2015 when the third Resurrection 'F' chapter came out and June 2015 when the first Dragon Ball Super manga chapter came out (even though there's literally just a single month break in there).

"Successor" is doing a lot of heavy lifting here, too. Do we collectively want it to mean the simple fact of "person drawing Dragon Ball manga"...? Or do we want it to mean "holding up the ideology and history and weight of the series on his shoulders as the sole individual self-selected by Toriyama-sensei himself"...?

And then that doesn't even fully get into the fact that what many folks point to as the primary source for "successor" isn't actually in the original Japanese text of its supposed first usage. (Apologies for a Twitter link, but that post is the easiest thing for me to dig up of my own research.)

(And, because this is the internet, even though it's our forum, I still feel the need to clarify and note that I say all this as someone who largely likes Toyotaro's work and growth over time.)

Anyway, I'm someone who definitely looks at the original serialization as "the series" and everything else is just varying degrees of gravy. It's simple, is what it is, doesn't disallow anything, nor forces anything.

[AliTheZombie13]

Hot as fuck take:

Dragon Ball was already dead to begin with. At least to me, there is nothing artistically valuable about "Dragon Ball was revived against the creator's will, and other people supposedly sucked so much at it, he begrudgingly accepted to come back and damage control their supposedly shitty ideas, even though he had zero fun doing it."

I put supposedly in there, because there's no way we can tell about how much things sucked before he went and edited the whole thing. But the point still stands. You guys were living in an illusion, the things that happened in Super and Daima weren't Toriyama's ideas or creative vision, it was him doing damage control on someone else's ideas and creative vision. And quite possibly ruining some of it in the process.

As for Dragon Ball's future, I'm not opposed to other people doing their take on the franchise, as long as something good comes out of it. This franchise has already proven to me it can be good without Toriyama given the right circumstances. As good ol' Osamu Tezuka and even Toriyama himself liked to say: "Let the new generation try new things, that's how progress is made."

But, if fans are so adamant about this sentiment that it will inevitably suck without him, then just kill the franchise and let it be forgotten already. Though, likely, that won't happen. Dragon Ball is way too profitable for that to happen. So the best we can do right now is hope whatever comes next will be good.

[VegettoEX]

You guys were living in an illusion, the things that happened in Super and Daima weren't Toriyama's ideas or creative vision, it was him doing damage control on someone else's ideas and creative vision. And quite possibly ruining some of it in the process.

I continue to not understand why you need to be so antagonistic about this.

Plenty of people are more than aware of all of these behind-the-scenes tidbits, context, history, etc. about how this all came to be.

Can you just please have a normal conversation?

[JulieYBM]

Since when was it a hot take to say that Dragon Ball was 'dead'?

Anyway, I think the use of terms like 'successor' are overblown/melodramatic/whatever term you want to use. I don't think that Toriyama ever really considered his role as creator as all that important a position and I don't think it's really that big a deal to look for a 'replacement'. We're not going to get our Yuyama Kunihiko for Dragon Ball. Folks like Iyoku Akio will continue to organize new products to sell because he has a product to sell and money to make, but there is not going to be some great creative mind running Dragon Ball. Toriyama was not that person, nor did he try to be outside of his duties as the original creator. Furthermore, it really does not come across as if Toriyama even particularly cared to leave behind a crewtive successor or whatever, either.

If we're lucky, Iyoku Akio will recognize the need for creative people to lead future projects and not job seek to fill film/series director roles with people who will not say no to him. That's about as much as we can hope for, and I think that because of that it's important to keep a degree of separation between yourself and Dragon Ball. You're probably going to be disappointed, lest we get new of an auteur being brought on as a chief director for the anime projects or a big name writer to write manga.

[AliTheZombie13]

I continue to not understand why you need to be so antagonistic about this.

Plenty of people are more than aware of all of these behind-the-scenes tidbits, context, history, etc. about how this all came to be.

Can you just please have a normal conversation?

I'm sorry, but sentiments like this just frustrate me beyond belief. It's incredibly disheartening frequently seeing people in this fandom immediately belittle and throw other creatives under the bus.

I apologize for coming out as harsh in my posts.

[Hellspawn28]

To me, Dragon Ball ends in 1995 with the final chapter. Everything else is extras.

[Zephyr]

Yeah, Dragon Ball ended in 1995, and that continues to be fine.

It's hard for me to agree that "Toriyama's modern continuation(s) of Dragon Ball end with Daima", because we still don't know that it does. Is a movie still coming? We don't know how many things he's had his hands in that haven't been announced yet. There could be one more thing in the pipeline. There could be a dozen. There could be zero. People are really jumping the gun on this.

As for someone being a "rightful successor", well, I don't like the idea of it being Toyotaro. I'd prefer someone with a less-holds-barred sense of humor, someone who loves reading and watching martial arts stories that aren't Dragon Ball, and someone who could survive the Torishima Rejection Gauntlet. I don't have anyone in mind, but those are the sort of credentials I'd want in the abstract. If you're gonna offer me more of a beloved dish after the chef has died, please try to stay as close to the recipe as possible.

DB's always been derivative of other works, and itself, but I find Toyotaro's approach to remixing existing DB stuff pretty bland and lackluster for the most part. I don't think he has a good handle on Goku and Vegeta's characterization anymore. He certainly knows a lot of lore minutia though, so I think he'd be a good person to have around to help consult and fact-check for new stories. But the Moro arc was my least favorite one in the manga, and if that's any indication of how character designs and arcs are going to be without Toriyama and Toei to steer him, I'd really rather not.

[eledoremassis02]

I think for me, I'm with the OP. After the next arc is done in the manga. I'm pretty much done with Dragon Ball. I appreciate the stuff that's come out, but for me, it's getting to be too much in the "gotta have it all" sense.

For Toriyama's influence, I feel it can be murky, and there's at least one example with Super. Early on in Tournament of Power, in the anime, Goku is called a Villan for willing to sacrifice universes so he can fight, and its an opinion of him that he's ok with. In the Manga, he is just as shocked as everyone else that the tournament meant erasing whole universes. Both had Toriyama's involvement to some degree, but the characterizations are vastly different.

As far as Toyotaro being the right or wrong person. But the Manga is now pretty much half as long as its original counterpart, and that's quite a feat, but as people mentioned, it started as a promotion for the anime. It's a product that evolved into a means to keep people engaged during a hiatus. I enjoy the manga (mostly), but it does lead to my next point.

I think Dragon Ball, at least with a specific generation, is too big to fail, so I would argue that Toyotaro isn't the wrong choice because he's fulfilling what is expected of him, and he's doing his best to do so. That said, I feel there is a specific feel that Toriaya put into his work of adventure and fun that is often missed in Dragon Ball when he is not involved. I appreciate his lazy sense of world-building and unlike a lot of people, I enjoy both his versions of the Saiyans and TOEI's versions. That said, the franchise has been going on too long and is starting to resemble its American Comic counterparts in needless complexity (both as a story and as a collection). To say both me and my wallet is fatigued is an understatement. That is what to me, Dragon Ball ends with Daima.

[BernardoCairo]

I actually like Toyotaro's work. It's much weaker than Toriyama's original manga, but that's to be expected.
The manga isn't perfect by any means, but I think it's the best version of Super. The Moro Arc is his creation and I think it's the best story in Super. It borrow elements from many different arcs from the original series, sure. But I think he managed to create something really unique regardless. He also wrote Super Hero's prologue with Goten and Trunks, which I really liked. It was funny, charming and different.
I hope he keeps writing the manga.

Toyotaro > Akio Iyoku

[Vegeta th3 4th]

I think the best way to honor Toriyama's work is to give his original manga an animated remake in Daima's quality.

[JulieYBM]

I actually like Toyotaro's work. It's much weaker than Toriyama's original manga, but that's to be expected.
The manga isn't perfect by any means, but I think it's the best version of Super. The Moro Arc is his creation and I think it's the best story in Super. It borrow elements from many different arcs from the original series, sure. But I think he managed to create something really unique regardless. He also wrote Super Hero's prologue with Goten and Trunks, which I really liked. It was funny, charming and different.
I hope he keeps writing the manga.

Toyotaro > Akio Iyoku

Why is it to be expected? Why can someone not create a better story than Toriyama Akira?